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It's hours until dawn and London is almost entirely silent. Aziraphale has just made himself another cup of tea, and he's now wondering idly if he should find a new space for the collection of mugs that seem to be expanding on the shelf above the sink. He's not sure where they'd all come from, they just seem to have accumulated as if by magic. Except for the snake-themed one, which he'd picked up from a museum gift shop three decades ago. Its serpentine handle is detailed and terribly prone to chipping. But Crowley keeps pulling it out and using it, with an expression of such annoyed fondness that Aziraphale has already repaired it twelve times.
He finds himself leaning over and touching the small, curved head, its forked tongue painted a vibrant red. He really can be a sentimental old fool sometimes. He nearly spills his tea in the sink when the phone rings, so intent was he in his memories.
The fact that it's a terribly unsociable hour means nothing. He and Crowley have been contacting each other since long before timekeeping was ever invented (and he's still not entirely sure if it was a good idea.) He doesn't even consider not answering it. The demon is just as likely to telephone him at three in the morning as three in the afternoon.
He takes his tea with him, lifts the receiver and tilts it towards his ear.
"Hello?" There's no immediate reply, but there's a rasp of indrawn breath which he would know anywhere. "Crowley?"
He waits through a long beat of silence that feels unexpectedly heavy, as if there are words the demon doesn't want to say over the phone.
Aziraphale frowns and sets his tea down. "Crowley, what's wrong?"
"Can you come?" The words are flat and tired. There's no urgency, nothing that suggests this is something Aziraphale needs to hurry for. But Crowley rarely asks for him in so blatant a fashion. Which means he's already unbuttoning his reading jacket and reaching for his coat.
"Of course, I'm on my way."
He walks the near-silent streets. Crowley's flat in Mayfair isn't very far away and it's not as if he can tire if he puts a little - or a lot of - haste into his steps. The demon doesn't ask for things easily, he's always been so reluctant to tell Aziraphale when he's in need. The only time he'd broken that rule it had been the end of the world, and though Aziraphale would like to think that Crowley feels more free to simply ask for his company, or tell him what he wants now, he suspects that's not the case. Or perhaps they both simply need more time to adjust to this new normal.
The door of Crowley's flat is open, the lights turned as dim as he's ever seen them.
"Crowley?"
"In here." The call comes from the office, two words that sound desperately tired, but still with a hint of quiet relief at his presence. Aziraphale would normally find that touching but instead it only serves to deepen his curiosity, and his worry. Because he can already tell that there's someone else here with them.
The door to Crowley's office had been left open too, as if leaving a path for Aziraphale to follow. The previously bare room now has a long, dark grey sofa pushed hastily against one wall. Aziraphale wants to say that it looks soft and inviting, but it's currently occupied by the sprawled form of a pale woman he's never seen before. She's painfully thin, and her short dark hair obscures half of her face, leaving one green eye and a red slash of mouth visible. She's wearing no shoes and the soles of her bare feet are ashy grey. She also seems to be trembling, the whole length of her body gently twitching and shivering as if in pain.
Crowley's sitting hunched in a plain dining chair next to her, his back a thin curve of misery. His hair is still damp from the rain, glasses hanging loosely from the fingers of one hand. He doesn't usually remove them around people, and the fact that he has done is worrisome.
"It's three in the morning and I was drunk," Crowley explains slowly, the words draining out of him as if he'd been holding them while he waited for Aziraphale to get here. "I must have looked like an easy mark."
Like a...?
"Oh," Aziraphale says quietly. Because he understands, all at once. "Oh dear."
The strange woman's veins are already darkening, becoming visible through her papery skin, and the edges of her mouth are slowly cracking. There's a fine line of watery blood seeping from the corner of her eye, and Aziraphale knows it won't be the last.
She'd thought that Crowley was human, she'd slipped in without being spotted, intending to snatch a mouthful or two, leaving him dizzy and confused but ultimately unharmed.
"I was drunk," Crowley says again. "I wasn't paying attention. She'd never have touched me if I'd been paying attention."
"It's not your fault," Aziraphale reassures him, slipping further into the room.
"It's a death sentence," Crowley says simply.
The vampire had expected the rich warmth of human blood and had instead ingested the blood of a demon. She might as well have drunk battery acid. There's nothing either of them can do for her now. Red lines are already trailing from her eyes and nose, and her bare toes and fingers are curling in as they watch. She's making low, breathy sounds of pain, lips curling away from her teeth until her fangs look too big in her bleeding mouth. Her irises are entirely black now, flitting around the room in quiet panic. Crowley leans over and very carefully pushes hair out of her face. He murmurs something that might be reassurance, or perhaps apology, but Aziraphale knows she's too far gone to care.
"She's old." Crowley gives that word weight, they both know what that feels like, how much it changes your perspective, to have lived through the ages of the world. "More than a thousand, maybe even two. She's been on this earth more than a thousand years, and one stupid mistake is the end of it all."
Aziraphale is tempted to gently remind him that humans aren't supposed to live so long, even like this. But he knows that's the worst thing he could say right now. Not while Crowley feels responsible for this woman's death.
"She's seen the truth of them, just like us. She could have understood some of it. We probably could have talked to her. Maybe just passing through every once in a while. You could have swapped book reviews, she would've probably gotten all your jokes about Dickens that I never appreciated. Someone else to talk to about all the things they've built and all the things they've torn down. The whole world used to be so much bigger, didn't it? Humanity spilling out to all the mysterious corners of it. Remember when London was small -"
Crowley stops, the woman's breathing has gone slow and rasping, and her sightless eyes have rolled in his direction, curled fingers twitching on the sofa cushion. He stares at her for a full minute in guilty silence, before he continues.
"Wonder if she remembers how annoying those nut sellers in the street were?" Crowley says, more quietly. "Do you remember those?"
Aziraphale nods slowly.
Crowley looks pained for a moment, as if realising how much there was to remember. How much was going to be lost tonight.
Aziraphale makes a gesture, and a second chair appears beside Crowley's. He sinks into it, and Crowley's quiet, angry fidgeting brings them carefully closer, until there's a narrow shoulder pressed to his own. As if he wants Aziraphale to hold some of the weight of him - of this - but he's too proud to ask. After a moment Aziraphale reaches out, lays his hand over Crowley's where the fingers are clenched at his thigh. He gently coaxes them to uncurl, then wraps his own around them.
Crowley takes a slow, deep breath, fingers trembling and then squeezing. Aziraphale thinks he's trying very hard not to react to the gesture.
"They'd just keep screaming for your pennies while you were trying to discuss literature in the street. It was infuriating. Or you could've commiserated together about capes going out of fashion, or - or talked about harpsichords, and the different colours of wax seals for every social connection that you were obsessed with for fifty years. She'd probably even remember how weird it was when they gave shoes a right foot and a left foot. And how wine was never supposed to be a fancy drink, it was just a way not to die from all the shit in the water -"
Crowley stops and looks up at him then, mouth angry, though Aziraphale knows it's not directed at him.
"You know they're not what people think they are. They're not monsters. They never take enough to kill anyone, they leave the fucking bloodstream healthier than they found it. They never deserved to be monsters. People made them monsters."
"It wasn't your fault," Aziraphale tells him again.
Crowley's mouth twists in misery. "I don't even know her name."
At fourteen minutes past six the woman stops twitching. Her limbs pull in like an insect in death, bones showing pale and hard through the skin. The moisture slowly starts to leave her, until the thing on Crowley's couch looks like nothing less than the remains of a mummified corpse.